60 Angels Remembrance

Jesuit Memorial College (JMC) aptly arculated in the metaphor of the Phoenix, the symbol of the school and expressed in its moo, “Hope Reborn,” is a full boarding co-educational school, rising out of the ashes of the tragic Sosoliso plane crash of 10th December 2005. Among the passengers on that flight were sixty-one students from Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja. Sixty of them passed on tragically that day. This was a tragedy of epic proporon. Fifty-four families lost their children; one family lost three children, while seven families lost two children each.

As a way of sharing/assuaging our pain and to immortalize our “Sixty Angels,” the then Executive Governor of Rivers State, Chief (Dr) Peter Odili, graciously acquiesced to the request of the Port Harcourt parents to give seed money and land to the Jesuits to begin a new Jesuit secondary school in Port Harcourt so that out of the ashes of their children, new shoots might blossom. The Jesuits of the North-West African Province of the Society of Jesus frontally and bravely took on this challenge!

The first phase of the project has been completed on the second of the twenty-one hectares of land provided by the Greater Port Harcourt City Development and approved by the former Executive Governor of River State, Honourable Chief Chibuike Romi Amaechi. The pioneer class was admitted in October 2013.

As part of the world-wide Jesuit network of schools, the JMC aims not only at providing quality education to talented young boys and girls of differing religious persuasions, but also aims to set an enviable standard of academic excellence in Nigeria and in Africa. The vision is to build a centre of excellence where the panoply of educational services is designed to encourage intellectual creativity and promote character. The vision is rooted in the spirit and method of the Ignatian Pedagogy which embodies the principles of order, sequence, individualization and personalization of instruction – alum norum cura personalis.

At the completion of six years of formation and training, our students are expected to be young men and women who are conscientious, persons of interior life who diligently search for meaning and the transcendence; who are competent, towards a new understanding of learning as key to human development; constantly acting as a way of service to God and others a current understanding of domestic life and ecological commitment and action.

The idea is not simply to immortalize our “Sixty Angels” in marble and granite, but to honour them in the living memorial of other children who will live out the vision/mission embodied by them. This, no doubt, will provide an on-going healing for the bereaved families.

The central focus of JMC is the memorial monument to the Sixty Angels who died in that infamous Sosoliso plane crash of 10th December 2005. The school will exist to keep their spirits alive and to allow them to reach out and touch generaons of people yet unborn. The school is open to children from across the country, and will admit children of all faiths, including Muslim children. The call is to realize that these children did not die in vain. Graduates of this college, having been transformed, will in turn become agents of transformaon in all Nigeria and Africa so that a beer world will be born. Then truly hope will be reborn.

LIST OF SIXTY ANGELS AS INSCRIPTED ON THE MONUMENT

1. BAA VIVIAN L.

2. OLAKPE CHRIS

3. OKEMINI IBISO

4. GBEMUDU SANDRA

5. IDABOR NNAMDI A.

6. LOOLO EMMANUEL I.

7. IBIAM NNANNA IBIAM

8. DANIEL-KALIO FANYE

9. AWAJI CHISOM E.

10. AWAJI UZOMA UGONNA

11. EKEFRE UDEME-OBONG

12. TONY-OKEKE JACHIMIKE

13. MBA IJEAMAKA M.

14. MBA CHINWEOKE OJIUGO

15. EGBOSIMBA CHINONYE S.

16. NWIGWE CHIOMA SHARON

17. NNEBEDUM CHUKWUEBUKA

18. NZELU CHIDINMA CHIDIOGO

19. NNAJI CHIDERA ALEXANDRIA

20. IROGHAMA SILVIA OGHOMWEN

21. OKPE DANIEL

22. NJOKU LINDA

23. AKWIWU AGU

24. ORBIH WHITNEY

25. NWADEI VANESSA

26. OKAFOR ZIKORA

27. OKAFOR CHIDINMA O.

28. ADEWOGA ADELEKE

29. AKPAN OBONGAWAN

30. EGWELE UZOR HELEN

31. AMACHREE OWANAR

32. ABBA KENECHUKWU C.

33. BADRU TOKE OLUFUMBI

34. NTEMUSE EMMANUEL E.

35. EKEREUWEM ANIEFON D.

36. AIKHIONBARE GABRIELLA

37. CHIGBO CHINENEYE MARITA

38. OYEBODE MAYOWA SARAH

39. ADAKA CHRISTIAN KELECHI

40. ADEBOLU OLUBUSAYO BARIZA

41. UTUK PETER INI

42. ELLAH IBRA A.D.

43. EDET HELENA S.

44. UBAH IFEANYI S.

45. ILLABOR BUSONMA

46. ILLABOR NKEMDILIM

47. ILLABOR CHUKWUKA

48. UGOCHUKWU UZO C.

49. NKAGINIEME UBANI

50. NKAGINIEME OBIOMA

51. NWOKO STEPHANIE C.

52. UKAIRO CHIGOZIRIM B.

53. KAMANU CHIBUZO MARK

54. EKEM AMANZE RONALD

55. AJILORE OLAWOLE DAVID

56. NZENWA ADACHI NNEOMA

57. UDEOZOR RICHARD CHINEDU

58. MONAGO AUGUSTINE IJEOMA

59. OKEREKE ONYEKACHUKWU D.

60. ADEYEMI EMMANUEL BOLUWARIN

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Jesuit Memorial College strives to form leaders who are religious, loving, seeking intellectual competence, open to growth and committed to doing justice.